


I'll Dive Back In.

by theweakestthing



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Co-Dependency, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Yet Another Exploration of Dan Cain's Broken Psyche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:09:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27807334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweakestthing/pseuds/theweakestthing
Summary: "Why get used to someone new? 'Cause no one breaks my heart like you." - Pool by ParamoreThe sound of the key sliding into the lock made Dan’s stomach churn. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, knew that he shouldn’t have come back, but there was nothing like the devil you know to keep you coming home. Slowly, he pushed the door open, winced as the hinges creaked. He felt like a dog returning to its owner with its tail between its legs. The only thing Dan had to feel guilty about was having yet again failed to untangle himself from the man who had destroyed his life.
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	I'll Dive Back In.

**Author's Note:**

> Pool by Paramore is such a Danbert song that I had to write this.

The sound of the key sliding into the lock made Dan’s stomach churn. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, knew that he shouldn’t have come back, but there was nothing like the devil you know to keep you coming home. Slowly, he pushed the door open, winced as the hinges creaked. He felt like a dog returning to its owner with its tail between its legs. The only thing Dan had to feel guilty about was having yet again failed to untangle himself from the man who had destroyed his life.

Said man was perched anxiously on the edge of the couch, twitchily flipping through a large textbook on the coffee table. Herbert’s eyes flicked up to Dan when the door closed behind him. Those hazel eyes pinned him to the spot and he was left immobile as Herbert shot off the couch and closed in on him.

“Oh Danny,” Herbert said, sweet words from lying lips, “I knew you’d come back,” he added, fingers curled cloyingly around Dan’s jaw.

Herbert pulled him down, witchy hands curled in the front of Dan’s flannel shirt, into a kiss. It was searing, like a brand. It was like water to parched lips and Dan drank deeply. He wrapped his arms around Herbert and held him close.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t gotten his fill. His fill of terror, disgust, abhorrent awestruck wonder, gore, failure, awkward unfulfilling companionship and throbbing loneliness. Horrifyingly, these things were never enough to keep him away.

There was no way to know for sure whether Herbert really gave a damn about him. Asking him was no use, he had lied about so much already, and Dan doubted that Herbert would so much as hesitate. It was pretty evident that Herbert wanted or needed to keep him around, but whether that extended beyond his usefulness as an assistant was a mystery and Dan could only theorise with what little evidence the man gave him.

Dan drowned himself on the illusion.

Herbert crashed over him, pushed him down onto the couch and straddled his hips, pressing their bodies flush together. A hand slid into his hair and blunt nails scraped against his scalp. Dan couldn’t help but groan against Herbert’s closed mouth, especially with the way Herbert’s hips were rolling over his own. That treacherous mouth moved down to the curve of his throat. Hot little laps of Herbert’s pink tongue against his skin, and the pull of sharp careful teeth made it all the more maddening, Herbert knew exactly what to do to pull him under. His head lulled back against the cushions as Herbert’s hands gripped his hips. His fingers dug into the denim clad curve of Dan’s ass, and it made the angle of their dry humping torturous. Herbert knew exactly what to do alright.

It hadn’t always been this way. In the beginning, it had been him leading Herbert in these physical matters. Herbert’s inexperience was self evident and Dan had revelled in knowing something that the other did not. Dan supposed he should have known that he couldn’t hold the upper hand for long, Herbert was a quick study and with this as with all things, it wasn’t long before Herbert had snatched the reigns from his hands.

He could have gotten the same, or better, feeling from someone else. Why get used to someone new, though, when no one could compare to Herbert. That thought was insidious. Was the unique taste worth all the heartache, all the soul burning pain? Probably not, Dan thought even as he gasped into Herbert’s mouth. If it was worth it then he wouldn’t keep questioning himself, Herbert wouldn’t have to beg and plead for him to stay, if it was worth it then it wouldn’t feel like he’d signed his soul away.

Before he knew it, Dan was divested of his clothes, and he was laid bare and panting upon the couch. Herbert pulled Dan into his lap, legs bent over Herbert’s thighs. He felt splayed open for the abominable Dr. West to dissect. Instead of tearing him open, Herbert wrapped his hand around the length of Dan’s erection. There was something about the fact that Herbert kept his clothes on that drove Dan up the wall. Perhaps it was the control and power implied by their different states of undress, it left him feeling powerless and there was something freeing about relinquishing control. That way he didn’t have to think about anything, and that was a kind of bliss in itself. In a slow and deliberate move meant to tease, Herbert leaned down and took Dan into his mouth. With a groan, Dan’s eyes rolled back in his head, fingers digging into the couch cushions as he scrambled for purchase.

The problem with Dan being Herbert’s only experience was that every move and action was perfectly calibrated to Dan’s specific likes and turn-ons. His own personal tormentor. Frankly it was the least of his issues with Herbert, to the point where it wasn’t really an issue at all.

When Herbert was touching him like this, it was easy to forget that there were any issues. There was no evidence of the horrors and crimes they committed together. It was easy to ignore what was locked up in the basement, out of sight out of mind as they said. In that same way, he thought less and less of Meg. The pain was more of an absence at this point, a hole he had tried to fill in all the wrong ways, woman after woman buried in his bed. Eventually he had turned to Herbert.

It felt as though it were inevitable, that he would find himself beneath Herbert in this way as with all others. He’d felt it the moment Herbert had gasped in full breaths of air on the morgue floor. The mouth to mouth had felt strangely significant, in a way that he didn’t want to examine. Maybe it had started earlier. Maybe Dan’s fate was sealed from the moment they’d met, he’d been irritated by Herbert’s behaviour and dismissive attitude but he couldn’t deny his intrigue or how he’d watched him leave, standing out in the hall until Herbert was out of sight.

Dan didn’t want to think about why Herbert had lube on hand. It said something about his own predictability and Herbert’s conniving mind, though Herbert would surely say that he found it pertinent to always be prepared, especially knowing Dan’s libido.

Any further thought was made impossible when Herbert’s fingers pressed inside him. With one hand wrapped around Dan’s leaking erection and the other slowly working him open, Herbert’s face was pinched in concentration, the tip of his tongue poked out between his pert pink lips. Dan found the effort attractive. It was hard not to be thrilled by the undivided attention, the obsessively focused tunnel vision worked in his favour here if nowhere else. He could almost mistake it for true affection. When Herbert crooked his fingers inside him, finally hitting that anticipated spot, Dan gasped and clutched at Herbert’s bent knee.

He had been inextricably drawn to Herbert from that first moment. He’d tripped, fell and hadn’t hit the ground yet. Looking back he wondered just what had gotten into him. He had sided with Herbert at every turn, even gave him the benefit of doubt when it was all but plainly obvious that he’d killed Rufus, even after what had happened in the morgue the first and then second time. It had to be more than just the genius evident in Herbert’s work. Of course he had been awestruck by what he was able to do and the promise of defeating the only enemy Dan had really ever had, destroying the spectre of death that hung over every patient in his care, was too tantalising to ignore or acknowledge what might happen if they failed. But there was more beneath that. 

It was only apparent in hindsight though, the worst things always were. In the moment people wanted to believe that they were doing the right thing, but that wasn’t always the case, and it most definitely wasn’t the case with Dan. When he looked back, his attraction was obvious. It was the only explanation that made what he had done make sense.

Dan wasn’t entirely sure if he’d had crushes on other men before, but he remembered being drawn to certain boys in school before he got too self-conscience or scared and ignored it in favour of chasing girls. In glorious hindsight, with all the evidence and new information laid out before him, Dan began to find his attraction to women dubious at best. He tried to think about it as little as possible. But it was impossible to ignore the pull Herbert had on him, it was almost like he’d been drugged, he had never felt so strongly about someone before. Those unacknowledged feelings had blinded him to so many things.

The head of Herbert’s dick was as pink as his lips. Dan watched in eager anticipation as Herbert opened his flies and pulled himself free, he tucked his tie into his shirt before he leaned over Dan, lining himself up. With a hand pressed to Dan’s abdomen, Herbert slowly pushed inside. Dan gasped, sneering at the slow intrusion, he’d never quite gotten used to the feeling of fullness. That didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy it though.

Maybe he was gay. Dan didn’t know and he wasn’t going to try and find out, he had enough on his plate with Herbert and the whirling hurricane of disaster that the man brought with him, he didn’t have the time or space to explore himself. It wasn’t a high priority. Stopping Herbert from getting the both of them killed or arrested was far more of a bigger and ever present problem.

Chilled fingers danced up his sides and gripped him around the waist. Herbert moved against him with such annihilating ease, Dan never would have thought that he’d enjoy being beneath another man, especially Herbert. There he was though, moaning against the couch cushions. It was a wonder that it didn’t wound his masculinity. He had always prided himself upon his own sexual prowess but he’d always found himself giving in to Herbert, there was probably something there to unpack but it was hard to think with the way Herbert was moving inside him.

“Is that good Daniel?” Herbert asked, as he mouthed at the inside of Dan’s knee, leg bent over Herbert’s shoulder.

“Uh-huh,” Dan mumbled, nodding his head. He could feel Herbert smiling against his skin.

It was overwhelming. The strength of his feelings and the way Herbert played his body so sweetly, it swept him away, and it was so easy to forget all the awful things. He was out at sea, and drifting in open water. Herbert bent over him, almost folding his body in half, just to ply him with kisses. They tasted like coffee crushed against his lips.

“Do you want to come?” Herbert asked, he always asked, Dan suspected that he enjoyed hearing him say it. He suspected that Herbert enjoyed embarrassing him.

“Y-yeah,” Dan said, he canted his hips up, moving with Herbert. He breathed hotly into Herbert’s open mouth. Dan threw his arm around Herbert’s neck and held the man close.

Herbert’s hand wrapped around Dan’s straining and leaking erection, Dan sighed at the touch and sunk against the couch. He choked back a moan as Herbert swiped a thumb over his slit, spreading precum across his head, and Herbert continued to pump his cock with a firm grip. His head was swimming.

It would be nice to think that Herbert felt the same as he did, if not to the same intensity, then something similar even if to a lesser severity. There obviously was some level of affection between them. He doubted that Herbert would let himself be touched, held and kissed if he didn’t feel something. The pleading and begging was more evidence. If Dan were nothing more than an assistant to Herbert, then he wouldn’t share his body, wouldn’t so eagerly call it _their_ work, wouldn’t have gone through withdrawal from the reagent, and he wouldn’t twist his life around Dan. It was apparent that Herbert felt something at least. Still, the degree to which he felt it was an unknown variant, that fact often left Dan feeling hollow and it became just another thing he tried not to think about.

“Come for me Danny,” Herbert muttered against his ear, “you’re a good boy Dan, come for me.”

Dan eyes shuttered and he clutched at Herbert’s wrinkled shirt as he came. Ejaculate covered his chest, stomach and Herbert’s hand. His hips kept moving, fucking into Herbert’s loose grip, riding out his orgasm as Herbert continued to pound against him. The bitten and choked groan that broke across his ear made Dan shudder. Herbert came with several rough stuttered thrusts into Dan’s over-sensitive body, he felt electric as though static was crackling over his skin.

“Herbert,” Dan began in a murmur, though he didn’t know what he intended to say and left the name hanging between them. Herbert pulled out of him and plucked Dan’s shirt from the floor, he cleaned the come off Dan’s body with it and dropped it to the floor again.

The thought occurred to him often, though he tried to avoid and hide from it, that he might love Herbert. Acknowledging the thought was dangerous. It tied him to Herbert in a way he wasn’t prepared for, in a way that would make it impossible for him to untangle himself from the other. As though he could leave Herbert now, he thought bitterly as Herbert petted the inside of his thigh. He had tried to leave that night and it hadn’t taken.

He sat up with some effort. One hand gripped the back of the couch and the other fisted in the front of Herbert’s shirt, and pulled the other man toward him and kissed him forcefully. He could feel Herbert’s come sliding out of him and ruining the couch cushions. Dan kissed Herbert so that he wouldn’t confess the feelings he knew would not be returned, and the thrumming hum from Herbert’s throat let him swallow the words, force them back down.

They were both addicts in one way or another, Dan knew that he would always relapse, drown himself in the sweet fantasy ‘cause he knew that there was no other high like the man in his arms.


End file.
